)
"Boys, take my advice, the stage is not the question,
But whether at three score you'll all have my digestion.
Why yearn for plays, to pose as Brutuses or Catos in,
When you may get a garden to grow the best potatoes in?
You see that at my age by Nature's shocks unharmed I am!
Tho' if I sneeze but thrice, good heavens, how alarmed I am!
But act your parts like men, and tho' you all great sinners are,
You're sure to act like men wherever Irving's dinners are!"
_J.H. Allen_ (our prompter):
"Whatever be the play, _I_ must have a hand in it,
For won't I teach the supers how to stalk and stand in it?
Tho' that blessed Shakespeare never gives a ray to them,
_I_ explain the text, and then it's clear as day to them![1]
Plain as A B C is a plot historical,
When _I_ overhaul allusions allegorical!
Shakespeare's not so bad; he'd have more pounds and pence in him,
If actors stood aside, and let me show the sense in him!"
[Footnote 1: Once when Allen was rehearsing the supers in the Church
Scene in "Much Ado about Nothing," we overheard him show the sense in
Shakespeare like this:
"This 'Ero let me tell you is a perfect lady, a nice, innercent young
thing, and when the feller she's engaged to calls 'er an 'approved
wanton,' you naturally claps yer 'ands to yer swords.
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